Poet,
artist, activist and owner of a legendary bookstore, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, at 83 still carries the torch for independent
thinking and political dissent

By
Tom Nattell

Five
white banners drape down between the second floor windows
of City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, spelling out a
short, direct phrase: Dissent is not un-American. Each banner
spells part of the phrase. Below each word is the black-and-white
image of a person whose mouth is covered, gag-like, with a
red, white and blue U.S. flag. The author of the phrase is
octogenarian poet, publisher, painter and social agitator
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who will be celebrating the 50th anniversary
of his bookstore next year. Since he opened its doors in 1953,
City Lights has been a bastion of political and literary dissent.
The banner message is just the latest sign of resistance by
this colorful and energetic artist, who will be in the Capital
Region later this month for the Woodstock Poetry Festival.“It
was dreamed up by a collective in the Mission District—a bunch
of young graphics artists,” explains Ferlinghetti. The poet
helped unfurl the banner project last October in response
to the threats to civil liberties that followed the events
of Sept. 11. “The first month or so after 9/11, they got by
with saying it’s un-American and you’re helping the enemy—you’re
aiding the enemy—if you dissent from our views and our wishes.
So, they got a lot of legislation passed, including the limiting
of our civil liberties, by these scare tactics,” says Ferlinghetti,
describing the environment that inspired the banner raising.

“They’re
strung out on the face of our building, and thousands of people—commuters
and others—see it every day going by because it’s a main intersection,”
says the activist-artist. “We get an enormous amount of positive
feedback.” With a slight laugh, he goes on, “The ironic thing
is that this is not a radical statement. It’s a perfectly
conservative statement.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, just north of New
York City, in 1919. He refers to himself today as “an old
New Yorker” and claims, with feigned sincerity,” I’m just
here [in San Francisco] on a visit. I could go back at any
time.”

Among Ferlinghetti’s cherished memories of growing up in New
York is a trip he made up the Hudson River while in his teens.
“I always loved the Hudson,” he reminisces. “When I was 15,
I took a canoe trip on the Hudson, and put into places like
Coxsackie and Saugerties.” (Whenever Ferlinghetti visits the
Capital Region, he always wants to check out the Hudson.)

Ferlinghetti did a stint in the Navy during World War II,
took part in the invasion of Normandy, and later experienced
directly the massive destruction wrought by nuclear war. “About
six weeks to two months after the bombing of Nagasaki, I was
there,” says the poet. What he saw in Nagasaki would forever
color his view of nuclear war. “As long as there are atomic
bombs, eventually they’ll be used,” he says, moving into a
dark moment of prophesy. “I think it’s inevitable it’s going
to happen here unless . . . Homo sapiens are able to agree
on the dismantling of all nuclear weapons.”

After World War II, Ferlinghetti went to the Sorbonne in Paris,
where he got his doctorate in 1950, and emigrated to San Francisco
the following year. Two years later he and friend Peter Martin
opened City Lights, the first bookstore in the United States
to sell only paperbacks. The bookselling was soon spun off
into publishing, and the City Lights publishing company was
formed. The bookstore quickly became a gathering space for
writers and activists, while the publishing company became
a vehicle to deliver their art and ideas to the public. The
bookstore recently was made an official San Francisco historic
landmark.

A critical incident in Ferlinghetti’s literary chronology
was when he heard Allen Ginsberg read his legendary poem Howl
at the legendary Six Poets at the Six Gallery reading in 1955.
The following year, Ferlinghetti published Howl in
the City Lights Pocket Poets series, and it quickly sold out.
When a second printing of the book arrived at the bookstore,
so did the San Francisco police, who arrested Ferlinghetti
for selling lewd and indecent material. Ferlinghetti fought
the charges, and on Oct. 3, 1957, he won the case. The court
battle transformed Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg into literary
heroes, boosted Howl sales, and helped the fledgling
publishing house get a firmer economic footing. In 1958, Ferlinghetti’s
A Coney Island of the Mind was published, which firmly
established his reputation as a poet in his own right. This
collection of his early poems continues to be a hot seller,
with nearly a million copies in print (it is now also available
as a reading on CD from City Lights).

Since those distant days, Ferlinghetti has been a constant
voice in resisting war and injustice, often putting his views
into verse. Early on, he earned the FBI’s stamp of disapproval
as a “beatnik rabble rouser.” The banners hanging on the bookstore
are but the latest in a long string of activism by the writer
who once said, “When the guns are roaring the muses have no
right to be silent.” He continues to follow his own advice.

Discussing
the banner pro-test inevitably leads Ferlinghetti to George
W. Bush, whom he refers to as “George the Second.” “This is
the most illiterate president we’ve ever had in the White
House,” he says. “Of course, he’s got a cadre of highly intelligent—what
do you call them?” Stretching back to memories of the days
of Nixon and Watergate, he pulls up the word he’s searching
for: “Plumbers?”

George W. doesn’t score any better with Ferlinghetti on the
economy or international politics. “Their economic policy
consists of pump priming the economy by huge military spending.
And what’s ironic,” notes the poet, “is George the Second
came into office with a total, typical Republican program
of shrinking the federal government and giving more power
to the private sector and to the states.” He sees the administration’s
current promotion of war with Iraq as little more than an
expensive diversion of the public’s attention from domestic
issues, similar to that portrayed in the movie Wag the
Dog. “It really gets them out of their domestic crises,
doesn’t it?” he asks. Ferlinghetti seems to relish discussing
the contradictions and ironies flowing from the Bush administration.

He thinks the current wave of corporate corruption cases has
revealed only a small part of the picture. “It’s the tail
of the serpent . . . and I think when the rest of the serpent
gets out or gets uncovered, Mr. Cheney’s gonna be very much
in evidence. And I won’t be surprised if in the November elections
this year the Democrats will sweep the elections and sweep
the Republicans out.” He then adds after a short pause, “As
long as they stop acting like Republicans themselves.”

Despite his advancing years, Ferlinghetti continues to write
poetry. “History of the Airplane” was written in response
to Sept. 11 and its aftermath [see Poetry in the Paper, page
25]. The poem follows the evolution of a technology that was
born with hopes for peace, and its ultimate delivery as an
unforeseen weapon of war.

Ferlinghetti’s most recent book of poems, How to Paint
Sunlight, was just released in paperback by New Directions
Books. The poems included in this collection were written
between 1997 and 2000. According to the poet, “All I ever
wanted to do was paint light on the walls of life. These poems
are another attempt to do it.” Many of the poems deal with
light in some form, fashion, application or particular place.
The book also includes poems written about the death of his
close friend Allen Ginsberg; a group of New York City poems;
and a poem written for the Greek Oracle of Delphi as part
of UNESCO’s 2001 World Poetry Day. Its cover picture is an
oil painting, by the author, of a human figure with birds
perching on its shoulders and rising from its feet.

Reflecting on the growing popularity of poetry among young
people today, Ferlinghetti says he suspects that “spiritual
hunger” feeds the interest. He goes on to say, “A lot of young
people have bad tendencies to go straight and have these serious
goals, like being part of the Consumer Society. So,” he adds
with a sly laugh, “I’m glad to see a lot of them are getting
straightened out by going crooked.”

And what advice does the elder poet have for young poets today?
“I would advise them not to go to poetry workshops and poetry
seminars and poetry retreats or to writers colonies—stay away
from all that! Bukowski would have nothing to do with anything
like this. He didn’t lead the literary life. He went to the
racetrack and bet on the ponies. It’s better if a budding
poet did something like that than hanging out with other poets.
. . . Avoid the academy at all costs!”

With the ranks of the Beat writers shrinking substantially
in the last five years with the deaths of Ginsberg, William
Burroughs, Gregory Corso and others, Ferlinghetti likes to
make it clear that he doesn’t consider himself one of them.
The bard notes that “I wasn’t a member of the Beat Generation.
I was the last of the Bohemian Generation. When I arrived
in San Francisco from Paris, I was still wearing my beret
in 1951. I became associated with the beats by publishing
them. My poetics are totally different, even though we had
great solidarity politically.”

While Lawrence Ferlinghetti is best known as a writer, he
is also a painter and is quick to note that he got into painting
“before poetry.” In conjunction with his reading at the Woodstock
Poetry Festival, he’s exhibiting some of his paintings at
the Kleinert Arts Center. “It’s called Lit.Paint. It’s literary
paintings,” says Ferlinghetti. The large oil paintings in
this show mix figurative images with what he calls “versions
or subversions of famous or infamous quotations from Dante
to Ezra Pound to James Joyce to Thomas Wolfe to Allen Ginsberg,
potent messages of poetry still haunting our collective consciousness.”

With all the activities he’s involved in at the sagely age
of 83, questions about Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s secrets for
a long, poetic life inevitably pop up. He answers with one
word: “water.” “We have the purist water in the country here
[in San Francisco],” he says. “It comes straight down from
Yosemite. It’s purer than the bottled water. You should drink
about eight full glasses of water every day—I mean big
glasses of water.”

And with all that fine water drinking, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
may far outlive the administration of those against whom he’s
most recently raised his banners of protest.

You
can catch some of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s verse live at the
Woodstock Poetry Festival (Aug. 22-25), where he’ll be reading
at the Bearsville Theater at 8 PM on Saturday, Aug. 24. Others
on the festival program include Anne Waldman, Michael McClure,
U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, Li-Young Lee and Sharon
Olds. Ferlinghetti’s exhibit Lit.Paint will be on display
at the Kleinert Arts Center (34 Tinker St., Woodstock) through
Sept. 15, with a gala fundraising reception Friday, Aug. 23,
from 5 to 8 PM. Tickets to the reception are $35. For tickets
and information about these events and the rest of the festival
schedule, go to www.woodstock
poetryfestival.com, or write to: P.O. Box 450, Woodstock,
NY 12498.